August 18, 2011

"But he doesn't do that. He looks at us, hesitates, turns around and goes back, veering off the path into the thicket of flowers, with one last soulful look in our direction. The Ferdinand of bears, lost in his world of flowers and berries."

a newlywed watched her husband get eaten by a bull shark, and now this. The animals seem to be p*ssed off with us.

Only in your limited view of how the animal kingdom works and considering we are a part of it. Plus the sensationalistic nature of such stories gets you to perceive that these isolated incidents are a result of a large animal uprising against humanity.

That story is traumatizing all right, but it's standard operating procedure for the mamma grizzly. She was teaching her cubs how to hunt and feed.

In Africa I once saw a female cheetah bring down a young gazelle. She had left her cubs to make the chase. After she caught her breath, she brought the gazelle to the cubs, who had trailed behind her. I thought she was going to feed them, but she had deliberately not killed the gazelle. Once it recovered enough to try to get away again, the cubs brought it down again and again until the mother stepped in and killed.

That second story is horrific, but I agree with one of the commenters--it seems a bit odd to me that someone who was being eaten alive by bears would be able to hold an hour-long mostly coherent phone conversation during the attack...

Bears are very powerful animals, fortunately they are very shy or we'd have already killed almost all of them off like wolves.

However, on rare occasions, one finds oneself on the wrong side of bear behavior and bad things happen.

As for wild animals, I think that whitetail deer are the greatest threat. They scare the crap out of me. Somewhere between 100 and 120 deaths annually caused by whitetail deer. They jump in front of your car on a rural highway.

@Methadras, I think MarkG has the right of it. The bear attack seems to have started with a man getting between a sow and her cubs, and the girl's running turned her into a target. According to friends who live in Alaska, they teach you to stay still and play dead while the bear gnaws on you, but the girl seems to have made an already terrible situation even worse by speaking on the cell phone.

(And no, I don't know if I could successfully play dead myself while a bear was chewing on me.)

My friends referred to their .357 Magnum as "Deet for bears," or something like that.

Possibly sad story... Last winter I began to see a coyote out by the barn where I do weekend work. Beautiful, reddish, young. I've seen the big gnarly ones, but this was a relatively docile, and small, female. Loved seeing her, she could jump like a deer and had a very distinctive "mask". Heard on the radio yesterday that the police shot and killed a possibly rabid coyote that was "orangish" in color about a half mile from the farm. Hoping I see her again.

Doesn't pay to take Nature lightly. Supposedly there were no confirmed black bear killings in the Eastern US and Canada and naturalists relied on that for a lot of mistaken assumptions -- until three young men were dragged out of their tents, killed and eaten by black bears up near the border about ten years ago. Coyotes weren't supposed to be a risk to anything but household pets and maybe an unattended infant or two until two coyotes attacked and killed a 19 year old girl in a provincial park in eastern Canada about two years ago, on a hiking trail within screaming distance of about 10 random parties of day-hikers. Rabies was not involved, nor was staration -- they just brought her down like they would a deer, and were feeding on the carcass when other hikers responded to her screams. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: Nature is red in tooth and claw. Walt Disney has a lot to answer for.

When we were hiking in the Grand Tetons, the Ranger instructions were for us to make noise, to not surprise the bear by being quiet and walking in on it and go in groups of 4 or more and carry bear spray..I was nervous and was relieved to not encounter any 'soulful' bears. Let them have their privacy and me, mine.

I hike alone a lot. Bears are all that scare me out there. You can scare off a cougar or coyote, but if a bear wants you, he's gonna have you. The only predator that gives you no options. They can out-run, out-swim, and out-climb you. They have no soft spots. You can't win with a club or probably even a knife. Even a handgun is gonna take multiple shots.

You are screwed. I suggest cleaver negotiation - maybe convince him you will bring back a nice salmon dinner instead.

In the area where I lived for 40 years, Orange County CA, mountain lions were the local predator. A few years ago, a woman mountain biking about 5 miles from my house was attacked by a lion. Her companion beat it off. Her husband, a local oral surgeon, fainted when he saw her in the preop room before she went to surgery for her face injuries.

The Sheriff's deputies were looking for the lion when they found another victim. Another mountain biker, alone, had been partially eaten. His liver was gone. It was less than a mile from the other attack.

I've grown up in bear country in Wisconsin and the most valuable tip I've ever gotten for dealing with bears is to remember that bears have very sensitives noses. If you're unfortunate enough to get that close to a bear, grab and twist its nose as hard as you can. It's the bear equivalent of kicking a guy in the crotch.

I stopped being amazed at people who don't take their personal security with any seriousness.

I see them every day. They walk across roads without even looking up. They lead their children to the banks of rivers yet they don't know how to swim. They stay out late at night in areas that are known for violence. Most of the time they luck out and there is no consequence to their actions.

They do the three stupids That is they go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people.

But now and then, one pays for their stupidity. And this girl who went unarmed where dangerous animals roam, paid this time. Her idea of a defensive weapon? Cell phone! Just like the guy who died at Yellowstone last month. All his wife had was a cell phone to call for help!

Stay away from the three stupids. The life you will save will be your own.

The best of my most memorable moments in life involved one or more of "the stupids". I'm pretty cautious (and I don't like it), but I'll take my chances. You're gonna die anyway.

I mostly fear a slow boring (smart) exit. Risk is not stupid. If it was, getting in your car or going into your bathroom would be some of the stupidest things you can do.

What happens if you take few risks in life and then get killed by a drunk driver, or cancer? Now that's stupid.

I can't control the drunk driver, or the cancer, so I got to water them down with worthwhile risks: hiking, biking, flying, hang gliding, running with scissors,... I hope one of them kills me quick.

The only problem with being eaten by a bear is doing it too young. Besides, being found flavorful at my advanced age would be taken as a high complement. I would not use my cell phone to call for help until he was satisfied with his meal. That's just common courtesy.

I like to think that if I was being eaten alive by bears I would have the sense NOT to call anyone who loved me and burden them with such a horrible, unbearable (haha) memory when a simple, final "I love you" text message would suffice.

(Fwiw, I'm not sure I'm prepared to believe "the village of Termalniy, near Petropavlovsk Kamchatskiy, in the extreme east of Siberia" actually has cell phone service, as reported in a British tabloid.)

There was a Native American tribe, the Dulanees, who inhabited the Pacific Northwest. To be accepted as a true man among that tribe, you had to hunt down and kill a grizzly. You were only allowed a sharpened stick for this purpose. The tribe is now extinct.

A few decades back now, I'm deer hunting on a switch back on the side of a hill in a stand of mixed broad leaf and tan oak (Northern California, in the Coast Ranges). Kind of steep back country. Very dry; the rainy season was late that year.

I'm walking along this tree-covered, rising and falling trail in the early morning, as quiet as I can be (and I could do my Native American ancestry proud in my younger days), looking up hill towards some denser stands, hearing occasional deer sound, but not seeing anything clear.

I get to the top of a little rise, and just over, and hear a "huff" sound, and look away from up-hill, and direct into the eyes of black bear ...maybe three feet from me. Maybe.

We stare at each other a bit.

And then a bit more.

Both of us all silent like, and contemplative. (It was early morning, y'know.)

I'm lookin' at him, and thinkin' "Oh shit, a bear".

And he's lookin' on that rifle at the ready in my arms (pointed pretty much at his snout, so it was pretty hard to miss it, even for such near-sighted beings as bears), and I could hear as clear as all get out him thinking "Oh shit, a gun".

I pretty swiftly come to the conclusion that if he ain't gonna move from the trail - and hell, as it weren't wide enough to pass by and go our separate ways - that maybe I'd just eeeaaasssse my way back up over that rise, which was just a short couple of foot behind me as I recalled.

So I step back and look away for a maybe a quarter second ...and hear a "galoomp-galoomp-galoomp" ...and feel a bit of a shake to the ground through my boots, y'know? Like when a train passes you by on a levee?

"chuck b. said...I like to think that if I was being eaten alive by bears I would have the sense NOT to call anyone who loved me and burden them with such a horrible, unbearable (haha) memory when a simple, final "I love you" text message would suffice."

I just looked to see if there are bears in Arkansas and apparently it used to be called the "bear state", but we hunted the bears down to tiny numbers so the wildlife service in the 50's secretly reintroduced them by trading fish and some other animal with another state for some bears. Now there are thousands. How interesting! I guess if I go hiking in NW arkansas, I will have to pay attention to that.

When I went to Alaska with the Army, my sponsor said of wilderness hiking and bears:

"Make sure you wear bells so they can hear you coming and you don't surprise them. And always carry pepper spray to ward off an attack. And know how to recognize bear scat: Black bear scat looks like a medium-size dog shit with beetles and berry seeds in it, while grizzly bear scat looks like a large dog shit that smells like pepper and has bells in it!"

I guess I'm a gullible sap...my eyes welled with tears as I read the story and tried to comprehend the almost inconceivable pain of mother and daughter...physical, emotional, psychological. I mean, truly, the horror...made me want to hug a loved one.

If a bear is charging at you, the only thing (for us non-gun owners) that could stop it is bear spray.

I feel bad about just commenting on bear risks. I am happy for Nina to have experienced that encounter without all the dangers it entailed. Her pictures are gorgeous and as a hiker, I know how she must have felt. Congratulations!

Tatiana, darling, could you get me another shot of vodka? And when you get back, please to be entertaining our guests here with your spot on impression of bear growling and making chewing sounds. I'm telling you, Sergei, she has this cold! There is not a better bear imitator than Tatiana for a thousand kilometers!

Mike-I'm a big fan of .357 mags. Probably the best all-around caliber, IMO. But, if needed vs. a threatening or, even more, a charging Griz, you might want to consider getting a .44 Mag. Even an expert shot, unfazed by a charge, is going to have trouble stopping a grizzly with a .357.

Sixty Grit: I think it's the California Golden Bear (a grizzly subspecies) on the flag that was declared extinct; there are some regular grizzlies in the Sierras still, plus black bears, and many of them have very troubling human interaction histories. Various wildlife control agencies who have to remove so-called "problem bears" from more inhabited areas choose remote mountainous areas for drops for their delinquents -- the Sierras and the Rockies are favorite dumping grounds.

I saw a woman pull her car to the raodside and engage in hand feeding of several black bears (we were somwhere around Yosemite Park). She was feeding them some sandwitches. I simply couldn't look away. She hand fed the last sandwitch to the largest black bear in the bunch, then she actually turned her back to the bear and was talking and laughing with her kids while strolling back to her car.

It's illegal, of course, but on the App Trail I carried a .357 magnum (The vaunted, "rule of law" never has impressed me much: Seems indistinguishable from tyranny much of the time).

Rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Also rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6. Pick your cliche.

Bottom line is, I'd never go out in the sticks without being armed. Yes, I even illegally carry in national parks, and to hell with anybody who says I shouldn't. Laws against what I do are, of course, illegitimate (And tyrannical!).

Bonus: Black bears are not NEARLY the threat that brown bears are, as they are relatively small and naturally shy. I'd want something like a .44 mag or a .454 Casull in grizzly territory, as they fight over territory much more readily... and are way huge. Female black bears with cubs are the danger. They will attempt to kill ANYTHING they perceive as a threat to their cubs.

In the west it's catamounts: They seem to enjoy dining on unarmed human hikers.

I once skimmed a book on bear maulings. The author had a list of possible responses (run, climb a tree, play dead), but to know which one to use you had to determine the species (some won't climb, others can climb faster than you can) and the motive (playing dead for a hungry bear just makes it easier for him). I concluded the suggestions were impractical. A .44 Mag, or better yet, a .45-70, seemed much more practical.

Fish and Wildlife Service joke: a fellow asks what type of handgun is best against grizzlies. He is advised "take a snub nosed .22, grind off the sights." He says "that's not likely to be good against a grizzly." He's told "No handgun is going to be good against a grizzly, but at least that one will hurt less when he rams it up your arse."

I stood between my family and a bear one time. All I had was biggish rocks to heave. That time turned out OK, but since then, I have serial dreams of bears and I always go out armed to the teeth. There just isn't any fucking around with Ursus Horriblis.

It took a long time for humans to get to the top of the food chain, a position I do not intend to yield. I am grateful that National Parks do not automatically disarm visitors any longer. The idea of curling into a fetal ball and waiting until the bear gets bored with mauling you is not a viable survival strategy in my book, although it continues to be what the Parks recommend.

A few years ago, 15 or 20, a woman was hiking or jogging a trail in California, and was killed by a mountain lion. Of course the momma lion had to be put down, but left behind two cubs, as did the jogger. Bank accounts were established for the orphans. Naturally, the orphaned mountain lions had more money in their account than the orphaned children. People get all gooey about wildlife.

The story is that a couple of back packers were getting ready to hit the trail when the park ranger pulled into the parking lot and warned them of bear attacks. One of them returned to the car, took off his boots and put on athletic shoes. The other hiker scolded him saying, "You can't possibly out run a bear.", to which he responded "It's not the bear I need to out run."

Both stories are traumatic, and almost unbearable. If we are going to allow animals to repopulate to their original levels, we should teach people to behave in the wild as people 200 years ago did, not as Nina does.

Idealists and romantics: one way or the other, your days in Eden are numbered.

"I saw a woman pull her car to the raodside and engage in hand feeding of several black bears (we were somwhere around Yosemite Park). She was feeding them some sandwitches. I simply couldn't look away. She hand fed the last sandwitch to the largest black bear in the bunch, then she actually turned her back to the bear and was talking and laughing with her kids while strolling back to her car. She got away with it but I still cringe at the memory."

That's how many bear encounters end up. Most of the time a bear will decide attacking a human is too risky, even with its back turned, especially if the bear has actually witnessed another bear being killed by human hunters.

Sadly, but profitably for casinoes, human brains are simply not wired to accurately assess probabilities. The old lady has probably fed bears many times before without being attacked, and will probably spend the rest of her life absolutely convinced bears are her wonderful friends, rather than wild animals who would kill her in an instant if they weren't so afraid of her.